Letters to a Young Contrarian

Christopher Hitchens's contribution to Basic Books' Art of Mentoring series, whose titles echo Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, takes the form of letters to an unnamed young reader addressed as My Dear X. Partly inspired by students he taught at The New School, Hitchens surveys the range of contrary positions, from the principled dissident to the gratuitous nuisance, and the attitudes that help in holding them. He reflects on how his own politics developed, on debate and humor, and the ways language is twisted to excuse offensive positions, and laments the decline of dialectical thinking, irony and satire. He invokes dissenters such as Emile Zola, Rosa Parks, George Orwell and Vaclav Havel.

Serial entrepreneur and investor Fabrice Grinda included it among the books he recommends beyond his own field.